Nanostructures can differ markedly from their analogous bulk materials. In particular, efforts have been made to synthesize nanowires to exploit their properties for various applications.
There are two basic approaches of synthesizing nanowires: top-down and bottom-up. In a top-down approach, a large piece of material is reduced down to small pieces through techniques such as lithography and electrophoresis. In a bottom-up approach, nanowires are synthesized by combination of constituent atoms. Most of the synthesis techniques are based on the bottom-up approach.
One particular bottom-up approach is referred to as solution synthesis. In solution synthesis, nanowires can be grown from a reaction mixture including a solvent, a reagent including a material forming the nanowires, and a templating agent. As the reaction mixture is heated, the templating agent can bind to a lateral crystal face of a nanowire seed, thereby inducing preferentially growth along a longitudinal direction that is substantially perpendicular to the lateral crystal face.
Once nanowires are synthesized, the nanowires can be suspended in a solvent, and the resulting suspension can be transferred to a container for storage and shipping.
It is against this background that a need arose to develop the embodiments described herein.